New Software + Services Blueprints announced at the TechEd Keynote today
Microsoft Developer Devision VP Soma Somasegar announced a cool new project at his keynote today. It was one of those things that, as soon as he said it, there was instant buzz in the crowd. The announcement is regarding web service integration into Office – for example, using Outlook as an eCommerce client.
The link is here – http://channel9.msdn.com/wiki/default.aspx/Channel9.SoftwarePlusServicesBlueprints. Why the buzz? Well, Office integration (Visual Studio Tools for Office) has traditionally been a pretty frustrating experience for ISVs. Not impossible certainly, but not exactly easy either, especially since the goal is almost always to extend the user interface in a way that looks seamless with the base product (ever tried to recreate a UI like Outlook?). The purpose of the "Blueprints" is to provide complementary sample code, best practices, and documentation wrapped up into a single package to help developers do just that. Very cool.
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